Thursday, August 30, 2007

back! and with double the kids!

Hey everyone (or no one? Knock, knock), yep I’m still here. We had another baby girl! She is almost two months old. And as for her big sister, she is doing great. She just started crawling (hands and knees, the real deal!) a couple weeks ago, and now she is starting to pull herself up on stuff and just in general is blessedly & sometimes frighteningly mobile! Good, good times.

We did have something of a minor scare with the pregnancy with #2, as the Quad screen came up positive for down syndrome(as it did with daughter #1), but this time 1:200 odds (Daughter 1 was 1:100). We were offered the amnio, but we didn’t take them up on it. (we did get the amnio for #1, and it ended up being a HUGE help in dealing with things emotionally, check my early archives for that story, leave it said for now that dealing with that roller coaster before, as opposed to after, our amazing daughter's birth, was incredibly beneficial for us & for her.)

Anyway, we were (and are) so educated on these things now, that we knew the odds (1:100) for a miscarriage from the amnio (which they were recommending), and we weren’t prepared to take that risk just for the comfort of knowing, because obviously, being parents of a child born with DS, we were aware what an incredible blessing (as opposed to incredible burden, which our genetic counselor tried to convince us of) a child born with down syndrome is. (all children are a blessing, but I think any parent of a child born with DS can relate, these kids are magical, they bring something to life that is astoundingly unique, and, well, I am continually speechless as to the degree to which my first daughter brings an unquantifiable amount of endless joy into our lives.) Long story short, we didn't NEED to know.

Anyway, fast forward to delivery and daughter #2 shows up and she does NOT have trisomy 21. needless to say we were relieved, although of course we would have welcomed and loved with all our hearts another daughter born with Down Syndrome. We are (and were) very excited, though, at the prospects of the girls being able to mirror each other, and learn so much from each other, and they’re so close in age (just about 13 months apart), that we know they will be great companions and mutual support system for each other as the years (and their lives) go by. I just know in my heart that each and the other will be blessed in ways we can't even predict by growing up together and being able to relate to their individual outlooks on the world.

Anyway, both daughters are doing great. As mentioned, daughter #1 is keeping us VERY busy, with all her fun crawling and grabbing and learning and yelling and she’s eating lots of solid food and feeding herself with her spoon and chasing the dog around the house, I could go on & on, and I will, hopefully, in another post. As for daughter #2, she is sleeping ALMOST through the night (just one or two nursing sessions a night, now) compared with the hourly wakeup calls that were the norm the first few weeks. She is adorable and has the most amazing smile which she blesses us with more & more often, as she cries less and less often. They say that if your first child is very mellow & doesn’t cry often, you’ll get a screamer for the next one, and they were right in our case. I wouldn’t label #2 necessarily a screamer, but she is not shy about being vociferous in getting her point across if she is at all disappointed in any facet of the current proceedings!

Anyway, that is the 90 second (er, 500 second?) update. We are extremely happy, extremely busy, and supremely blessed. More later, but here are some updated pics! Hope all is well with all of you, whoever & wherever you are.